Salman Rushdie Midnight's children Salman Rushdie Midnight's ...

lish; and in a large hall dominated by garlanded portraits of Muhammad Ali J
innah, the founder of Pakistan, the Quaid i Azam, and of his assassinated fr
iend and successor Liaquat Ali, a perforated sheet was held up and my sister
sang. Jamila's voice fell silent at last; the voice of gold braid succeeded
her brocade bordered song. 'Jamila daughter,' we heard, 'your voice will be
a sword for purity; it will be a weapon with which we shall cleanse men's s
ouls.' President Ayub was, by his own admission, a simple soldier; he instil
led in my sister the simple, soldierly virtues of faith in leaders and trust
in God; and she, 'The President's will is the voice of my heart.' Through t
he hole in a perforated sheet, Jamila Singer dedicated herself to patriotism
; and the diwan i khas, the hall of this private audience, rang with applaus
e, polite now, not the wild wah wahing of the Bambino crowd, but the regimen
ted approbation of braided gongs and pips and the delighted clapping of weep
y parents. 'I say!' Uncle Puffs whispered, 'Darn fine, eh?'
What I could smell, Jamila could sing. Truth beauty happiness pain: each had
its separate fragrance, and could be distinguished by my nose; each, in Jam
ila's performances, could find its ideal voice. My nose, her voice: they wer
e exactly complementary gifts; but they were growing apart. While Jamila san
g patriotic songs, my nose seemed to prefer to linger on the uglier smells w
hich invaded it: the bitterness of Aunt Alia, the hard unchanging sunk of my
fellow students' closed minds; so that while she rose into the clouds, I fe
ll into the gutter.
Looking back, however, I think I was already in love with her, long before
I was told… is there proof of Saleem's unspeakable sister love? There is. J
amila Singer had one passion in common with the vanished Brass Monkey; she
loved bread. Chapatis, parathas, tandoori nans? Yes, but. Well then: was ye
ast preferred? It was; my sister despite patriotism hankered constantly aft
er leavened bread. And, in all Karachi, what was the only source of quality
, yeasty loaves? Not a baker's; the best bread in the city was handed out t
hrough a hatch in an otherwise blind wall, every Thursday morning, by the s
isters of the hidden order of Santa Ignacia. Each week, on my Lambretta sco
oter, I brought my sister the warm fresh loaves of nuns. Despite long snaki
ng queues; making light of the overspiced, hot, dung laden odour of the nar
row streets around the nunnery; ignoring all other calls upon my time, I fe
tched the bread. Criticism was entirely absent from my heart; never once di
d I ask my sister whether this last relic of her old flirtation with Christ
ianity might not look rather bad in her new role of Bulbul of the Faith…
Is it possible to trace the origins of unnatural love? Did Saleem, who had
yearned after a place in the centre of history, become besotted with what h
e saw in his sister of his own hopes for life? Did much mutilated no longer
Snotnose, as broken a member of the Midnight Children's Conference as the
knife scarred beggar girl Sundari, fall in love with the new wholeness of h